Cuatro Caminos

Cuatro Caminos is the part of Múgica municipality that grew up around the busiest junction in Michoacán's Tierra Caliente, on the southern edge of Nueva Italia, which it has all but merged with. The name means "four roads": at its roundabout federal highway 37, coming down from Uruapan toward Arteaga and the Lázaro Cárdenas coast, crosses the road west to Apatzingán and the way onto the Siglo XXI toll road to Morelia.

The 2020 census counted 1,484 residents (707 men and 777 women), up 290 since 2010. It sits at 348 metres in the Balsas depression, in a dry steppe climate with summer rain: about 443 mm a year, and daily temperatures between 22 and 38 °C.

For most travellers Cuatro Caminos simply means its bus terminal, a waiting room facing the bays where Parhíkuni coaches stop on their runs between Morelia, Uruapan, Apatzingán and the coast. It serves the whole of Nueva Italia, ranks among the state's main terminals and handles first-class service only.

Local dates are civic ones: Independence on 15 and 16 September, the Revolution on 20 November, and every 10 April, the anniversary of Emiliano Zapata's death, a ceremony led by the sitting governor of Michoacán. Being the crossroads also makes the roundabout a place where blockades happen; in 2020 at least four trucks were set on fire nearby and traffic through the roundabout stopped until police reopened it.